Our Heritage

By Dr. Milton Loyer

September – 100 years ago 

The annual session of the Allegheny Conference of the United Brethren Church met September 17-22, 1918, and approved the following in the Report of the Temperance Committee.
“The tide of prohibition is sweeping over our country and the whole world, and soon we shall hear of not only National prohibition, but of World prohibition. That prohibition has passed the Senate and will become a law July 1, 1919. All brewing must stop May 1, 1919.
“Resolved: that we will be true to our cherished history of temperance and that we will lend our aid to the W.C.T.U., the Anti-Saloon League, and all kindred organizations working to banish forever from our fair land this abominable curse that is wrecking so many promising lives and homes and sending souls by the thousands to a drunkard’s hell.”

October – 50 years ago

On October 4, 1968, some 1,000 persons gathered at the Zembo Shrine Mosque in Harrisburg for a dinner and reception welcoming Hermann Kaebnick as the newly appointed bishop to the reorganized Harrisburg Area of the United Methodist Church, consisting of two overlapping conferences – Central Pennsylvania (former Methodist) and Susquehanna (former EUB). Charles Edgar, lay leader of the Central Pennsylvania Conference, was the master of ceremonies, and Mrs. William Lippert, president of the Woman’s Society of the Susquehanna Conference, gave the invocation. Bishop John Wesley Lord of the Washington Area was the guest speaker. In 1970 Bishop Kaebnick would oversee the realignment of those two and other area conferences to form the Central Pennsylvania Conference.